Twenty years ago this week Barnardo’s Cymru opened its Cardiff Young Families Project for teenage parents. Abbie Wightwick hears how it’s helped more than 100 young parents over two decades and is still helping today...

THE TEENAGE MOTHER’S STORY

Charlotte Rooks was 17 and halfway through A levels when she discovered she was pregnant. She’d left an all-girl boarding school a year earlier and was enjoying living at home and going to Cardiff’s Coleg Glan Hafren.

When an older boy showed an interest she was swept along as her social and love life blossomed.

“My boyfriend was quite a lot older than me. I’d known him a few months when it happened. It was an accident. You don’t think. I had no one to blame but myself,” Charlotte says frankly.

Dentist’s daughter Charlotte, who was studying maths and English A levels, was too terrified to tell her parents and went into denial.

“I just hoped it would go away,” she recalls.

“I didn’t want to tell my mother. I was scared.”

Somehow Charlotte, now 29, managed to hide her expanding belly from her parents for six months but by then she was obviously pregnant.

“My parents were shocked and really disappointed. They wanted me to go to university, anything apart from this,” she recalls.

With her boyfriend no longer interested and the relationship with her parents under strain Charlotte didn’t want to live at home.

“I didn’t get on with my parents and went off the rails completely,” she admits.

“Because of my age social services were involved so I was offered a place at Barnardo’s Cymru hostel for teenage mothers and moved in with my son when he was two months old.”

Moving into the hostel run by Barnardo’s Cymru Cardiff Young Families project with two month old son Welsh Charlotte began to turn her life around.

Staff showed her how to care for her baby and persuaded her to return to college and finish her A levels.

“They were really good. They gave me advice and there was no stigma,” Charlotte says.

“Barnardo’s put me in touch with a child minder and encouraged me to go back to college, which wasn’t easy,”

She passed A level maths and, English and a GNVQin health and social care.

“Having a baby so young made me grow up,” Charlotte says.

“I missed out on little things like sitting in with friends and getting ready together to go out.

“The novelty of having Welsh soon wore off with my friends and I didn’t see them as much.”

Living for a year in the hostel with Welsh Charlotte learned childcare, how to cook on a budget and how to live independently.

“There was always someone there to talk to and the staff were never judgemental.

“They let you try to do things for yourself first.”

By the time she was 18 Charlotte was ready to move out and care for her one-year-old son alone. Barnardo’s helped her find a flat and she still returned for visits but life was hard.

“At one point I took eight buses a day to take Welsh to nursery and then on to college and work,” she recalls.

Today Charlotte works as a dinner lady at Llysfaen Primary School and at a casino in Cardiff and is determined to do the best for her son.

She’s proud Welsh, now 12, is happy and doing well at high school and has spoken to him about how hard it is having children young.

“I do worry how people see us and it is hard. Welsh’s friends sometimes think I’m his sister.

“We had very little money early on and lived off hand-me-downs.”

Charlotte’s father has moved abroad but she has rebuilt her relationship with her mother, Welsh see his father every fortnight and has taken his surname of Clayton.

As she approaches her 30th birthday Charlotte says getting her life on track would have been harder, if not impossible, without Barnardo’s help.

“The hostel helped no end and staff never judged me.

“Even when I left I popped in.

“They really helped me when I needed it.”

The project worker's story: next page Lucy's story: next page

THE PROJECT WORKER’S STORY

Sally Jenkins launched the Cardiff Young Families Project for Barnardo’s in 1992.

Since then more than 100 teenage parents have lived at the hostel and she has seen many go on to build successful lives.

Among former residents she’s still in touch with one, who left school with no qualifications, went back to study and is now a social worker in England.

Another set up and runs a successful catering business and another is a youth worker.

Others she knows about have built happy homes staying with their teenage partners or with new partners and some have lost touch.

“There is still stigma about young parents but I hope there is a little more understanding now than there was 20 years ago,” says Sally, now assistant director of Barnardo’s Cymru.

“There’s something aspirational working with these young women with the cards stacked against them and yet so many have come through so well.

“Teenage parents can do well and be good parents.

“There have been tragedies though, We know of at least one girl who died and some of the children ended up in care, but I hope the support we gave them made it that little bit easier.”

The Cardiff Young Families Project is holding it’s 20th anniversary reunion party tomorrow and is trying to contact everyone supported by the project through the years. Anyone who would like to go along should contact the project on 029 2066 8184.

LUCY’S STORY

Lucy, now 28, was 15 when she gave birth.

Family problems meant she couldn’t live at home or stay at school and for her the Barnardo’s hostel was a lifeline.

“I was allocated a support worker who worked one to one with me and helped with confidence building,” she recalls.

“I lived at the hostel from when I was 16 to 21 and I still go in to chat with them.

“If it hadn’t been for Barnardo’s I’d have been lost. My parents had their own problems and my boyfriend was violent.

“I left school at 14 with no qualifications but Barnardo’s helped with how to manage money and live independently. I really enjoyed my time there. it was like an extended family.”

Today Lucy, who doesn’t want to reveal her real name, has a job in a cafe, her 13-year-old daughter is doing well at school and she has two other younger children.